ink brown wash, white highlights and measure respectively 42
x 62.7 cm and 41 x 62.7. They have been published on several
occasions and included in the exhibition “Civilta dell’Ottocento”,
at the Museo di Capodimonte of Naples and at the Palazzo Reale
of Caserta, in 1997 (exhibition catalogue, no 16.15, illustrated).
2 There is for instance a preparatory drawing that is quite detailed,
but all the same in a more relaxed style (Sotheby’s 30 January 2013,
lot 318) for one of his frescoes at the Palazzo Castriota Scanderberg
(1794), the Apollo and Marsyas.
3 Fabiana Mendia, “Sugli sviluppi del neoclassicismo a Napoli:
Giuseppe Cammarano pittore, decoratore e pittore figurista nei
teatri reali”, Bollettino d’arte, no 74-75, 1992, p. 31-64.

seen with excessive muscle structure, constricted and tense
poses, belonging to an exaggeratedly expressive neoclassical
aesthetic in his demonstration of strength and virility.
The old mount of the second of the Sotheby’s drawings bore
the date of 1799 which provides a precious indication that is
perfectly logical. Our drawing and the two sold at Sotheby’s
indeed fit well stylistically between other graphic works: a
drawing of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria in Naples
bearing the date of 1792 and a sheet of 1811 of the Museo di
San Martino in Naples, for example. The first, Achilles with
the body of Patroclus, created in Rome, is much less skilful,
however already with the tendency to blacken the eyes, while
the second Psyche carried by the Wind is of an already more
sinuous and more precious neoclassicism, more strongly
influenced by German neoclassicism than French.
While still very young, Cammarano had worked with Fedele
Fischetti, in the church of Santa Maria at Pugliano for example,
then with Jacob Philipp Hackert at the Casino di Cardito.
Noticed by Ferdinand IV of Naples, he was awarded a prize
and sent to Rome where he discovered the works of Anton
Raphael Mengs and Pompeo Batoni. On his return, he worked
with Andrea Giusti on the restoration of the Villa della Tenuta
di Carditello. In 1799, at the time of the short-lived Neapolitan
republic, Cammarano was in Naples where he had numerous
contacts with Heinrich Friedrich Füger and J. Heinrich Wilhelm
Tischbein, representatives of German Neoclassicism. What
therefore was the purpose of these drawings in the context of
the career of a painter who was still young, appreciated, close
to Neoclassical circles but who had also worked alongside
representatives of late Baroque such as Fischetti? Do they form
a series that prepares a décor intended to be created, perhaps
in grisaille or camaieu?2 Or rather drawings drawn for their
own sake? Their level of finish and the sophistication of their
technique plead in favour of this hypothesis. In October 1799,
Cammarano asked to be appointed Professor at the Fine Arts
academy of Naples: with these drawings could he be seeking,
as Fabiana Mendia suggested in her article on the master,3
to prove his adherence to the principles of “simplicity of
composition which had been achieved since David […], the
abstract purity of the line” advocated by its director Tischbein,
who in fact resigned the same year?
1 They were sold by Sotheby’s Milan on 22 June 2004, and their
current location is now unknown. They are in pen and brown